… for the title of worst person in the world
Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, Senior Fellow at the American Immigration Council paraphrased the letter on BlueSky:
Erez Reuveni, the DOJ lawyer fired for his honesty in the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, sends Congress a whistleblower letter detailing lawlessness at the DOJ around the CECOT deportations.
He says Emil Bove told the DOJ to respond to likely court orders blocking flights with “fuck you.” Reuveni accuses Drew Ensign, the DOJ lawyer appearing for the Trump admin in the CECOT cases and other immigration cases, of lying to Judge Boasberg on March 15 when he said he didn’t know planes were taking off. He says Ensign was at a meeting the day before when the flight were planned.
Reuveni says that on March 15 he was emailing DHS updates telling them that Judge Boasberg was entering a court order to block the flights, worried that Ensign wouldn’t act. His supervisor, August Flentje, noted Bove’s “fuck you” line and joked Reuveni might be fired for raising alarm. He was.
Reuveni notes that he repeatedly told DHS throughout the night of March 15 that they had to follow court orders. Even Drew Ensign agreed Judge Boasberg’s order required them to turn the planes around. Emil Bove intervened and ordered DHS to ignore that interpretation.
Reuveni’s whistleblower account also says that senior DOJ leadership directly ordered DHS not to comply with Judge Boasberg’s order to report as to what happened with the flights. Drew Ensign, who was appearing in front of Boasberg, was personally involved in passing along this decision.
Relevant to yesterday, Reuveni also accuses senior DOJ leadership of defying the D.V.D. court order, with the DOJ refusing to distribute nationwide guidance on its impact despite the order quite clearly applying nationwide. Yesterday SCOTUS blessed other defiance in that case.
Reuveni says he was ordered to file a brief at the 1st Circuit seeking an emergency stay of the D.V.D. injunction. The brief argued that the order applied nationwide, and yet Reuveni knew that inside DHS, the Trump admin was saying it only applied to the named plaintiffs — so he refused at first.
After Reuveni again raised serious concerns that DHS was treating the D.V.D. injunction as if it hadn’t happened and didn’t apply nationwide (despite telling a court it agreed), Drew Ensign personally told him to stop sending emails raising concerns about noncompliance.
On March 31, when the Trump admin deported more people to El Salvador using military flights, Reuveni knew that those flights violated the D.V.D. court order. He says the DOD’s General Counsel didn’t know about the court order and was “upset” that DHS hadn’t told him about it.Reuveni, again investigating what appeared to be a clear violation of a court order, reached out to the DOD and the State Department. The DOD’s General Counsel says Joseph Mazzara had organized the flights — but Mazzara told Reuveni he didn’t know anything about them.
Reuveni, again investigating what appeared to be a clear violation of a court order, reached out to the DOD and the State Department. The DOD’s General Counsel says Joseph Mazzara had organized the flights — but Mazzara told Reuveni he didn’t know anything about them.
After Reuveni raised his serious concerns about the admin having violated a court order, Yaakov Roth, a senior DOJ attorney put there by Trump, ordered him to stop asking questions and stop writing things in email. The implication was that the admin wanted to hide from FOIA.
Turning to the Kilmar Abrego Garcia case, which got Reuveni fired, he says that he repeatedly raised serious concerns about the facts and the law — and that DOJ leadership again ordered him to stop asking questions and stop trying to uncover the truth of the matter.
Finally, Mr. Reuveni says that he was ultimately fired because he refused to sign a legal brief making an argument that was directly contrary to law and unsupported by any evidence put forward in the case — that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was legal because he was a “terrorist.”
Mr. Reuveni’s whistleblower letter is a shocking documentation of the Trump administration’s contempt for the rule of law and for the federal judiciary. Unfortunately, yesterday the Supreme Court arguably blessed this defiant attitude from the admin.
You can read the letter itself here, and you should. The NY Times article here. It’s stunning.
The DOJ is a flagrantly lawless institution now.
Bove has always been a monster, starting when he was a US Attorney. He then went to work for Trump, naturally:
“In my experience litigating against him, what he enjoyed most as a prosecutor was wielding power — the single worst possible trait for a public servant,” said Christine Chung, a former federal prosecutor who as a defense attorney has squared off against Bove. “But people won’t speak against him publicly because he’s also vindictive, as he is now making abundantly clear.”
Trump has nominated him to a federal judgeship. If he gets on the bench look for Thomas to resign in 2027 and Bove will be nominated to replace him.